[Tlhingan-hol] Eurotalk - New Words - Shopping

[Qov]

At 08:47 08/11/2011, you wrote:
>I get the feeling the space in cha''etlh was 
>left out on purpose, but that's just a hunch.
>If it is meant to be that way, and there really 
>is such a root word, it may indicate that there 
>are similar tools/weapons on Qo'noS, and not 
>just something they made up for the EuroTalk DVD.
>
> > BTW, this one is a good example showing that the creator of Klingon is
> > an english speaker. Not every language (e.g. German) does see the
> > scissors as a pair. scissors is plural, because it has two blades.
> > French does the same: les ciseaux. In german, it's singular: eine Schere.

That's cool because in English we describe 
implements that resemble scissors but are larger 
or more powerful (wow, I accidentally perfectly 
set them up to be called {cha''etlh pe'wI''a'}!) 
as shears, plural. I had to write some 
experimental sentences to see how I would 
explicitly talk about multiple ones.

"Do you sell shears?"
"Is there another set of shears somewhere?"
"There are two pairs of shears in the garage."

I also want to point out that despite being 
described as two-bladed, the Klingon implement 
seems to be grammatically singular. wa' cha''etlh pe'wI'.

>The case is similar in Swedish:
>a pair of scissors = en sax
>two pairs of scissors = två saxar
>
>However, if you were to tell somebody "en sax 
>har två blad" ("a pair of scissors has two 
>bladed"), I doubt anyone would complain.

And I'm sure that's a typo for blades.

-Qov